Mierere Mei

In 1770 Leopold Mozart wrote in a letter to his wife that the young Amadeus had transcribed the Vatican's enchanting setting of Miserere Mei by Allegri, a piece so beautiful that the distribution of it was punishable by excommunication from the Catholic Church.

In the last 5 years the music industry around the world has been forced into action in response to a barrage of threats to the intellectual property, which it claims to protect. Before the advent of the internet and mp3 audio compression, the worst cases of music-sharing that the music industry had to endure were friends mashing together compilation cassettes for eachother. Even with the advent of mp3s mass proliferation of 'free' music did not take off until Napster released a way to get round the problem of having all the mp3s stored on a central server. Instead users could swap music with eachother using a central server as a temporary stopping point. Music sharing exploded as users suddenly found they were able to assemble vast libraries of music selecting items track by track. Napster was eventually closed down on the grounds that the use of a central server still meant that they were distributing copyrighted technology. However by this time several alternative file sharing networks had sprung up culminating in BitTorrent, which creates its network without the use of any central server.

As the music industry realised that they would never be able to close down all the file sharing networks they started targetting actual people using these networks: alleged serial file sharers. They were taken to court or required to pay damages to avoid a court battle. The tactics of the music industry are clearly more to do with scaring people away from file sharing by creating some high profile pilorries, than actually targetting users who were engaged in piracy in anything more than a trivial sense.

The music industry, shaken by the threat of ordinary users distributing their music has started to place limits on the creation of digital copies of music you have purchased. The culmination of this was the Sony Rootkit farce, where the copy protection software and the software used to verify its installation before giving you a download link, both opened Windows computers to virus invasion. What the music industry has failed to appreciate is that this sort of copy protection does nothing to help them. Users with iPods and other mp3 players now have an added layer of confusion when buying a CD: will they EASILY be able to get their new CD onto their iPod? If the answer is no, then you can bet that they will very quickly stop buying CDs. But does the copy protection do anything to stop music pirates? Well the answer is no: the copy protection only works on certain windows PCs so if you're using an Apple or Linux box then you can still copy the CD as normal; further more if you happen to be a really keen music pirate, you could always record the CD as it plays. It will take much longer, but if you're actually making money out of pirated copies, then what reall difference will an hour's wait make?

In summary then, Copy Protection cannot offer the kind of security the music industry craves. Instead it may even have the reverse effect, confusing iPod users to such an extent that acquiring music illegally may seem like the best option.

But it gets worse: the music industry appears to be taking steps to build up a climate of fear, where by they can restrict the rights of listeners by making them worry about the consequences of making one tiny step out of line. Music sharing in America has already been linked to terrorism. I have to say I can't understand the connection or the logic in this step. After all if as the pattern in individuals taken to court by the music industry shows, it is average day-to-day users who are sharing music, then surely terrorist aren't involved. But supposing that the user you are downloading Eminem's latest from is a terrorist, then what on earth is the benefit for him? Subliminal messaging? Turning your PC into a weapon of mass destruction?

Returning to more mudane matters, the mere threat of legal action is enough to create this atmosphere of fear. Not only are music companies targetting the download networks, they are now attacking the paraphanalia of digital music appreciation. Over the last month or so, a number of music lyric sites have received Cease and Desist letters citing as authority the Grokster case in the US. One developer, the author of PearLyrics, was forced to remove his software which did nothing other than interface with search engines to find lyrics. Had he the resources to fight his case, he would doubtless be in a good legal position since he is in no way stealing copyrighted material or even encouraging people to do the same. Indeed if a case can be made against him then by analogy, cases could be made against Apple for providing users a Lyrics field in iTunes and against Google for indexing copyrighted lyric in their database. Once again though the logic of this action is completely perplexing: in my own experience, I'm not bothered about obtaining lyrics for performance, or even for viewing; most of the time I just want to search for the lyrics of a song I may have heard and want to buy off iTunes. If the lyrics sites disappear then I will be completely stuck!

The music industry needs to offer the consumer something new and exciting, as opposed to trying to scare out of not only that which is illegal but also that which we have been doing happily for years.